


I Know You & You Know Me

by mrs_d



Series: Dead Ends [12]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Case Fic, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Periods & Menstruation, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-12-26 14:29:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18284162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrs_d/pseuds/mrs_d
Summary: One morning, Barry and Iris wake up to discover that they can read each other's minds.





	I Know You & You Know Me

**Author's Note:**

> This has been hanging out in my WIPs folder for several months now; unfortunately the time has come to throw in the towel. (If anyone wants to pick this idea up, please link me!) Someday, I may revisit this idea and try it again, because I really like it as a WestAllen one-off premise, I just don't know where to go with it here. 
> 
> Set during season 4, when Barry is out of jail but not back at the CCPD yet *handwaves the actual plot of the season away*
> 
> Title comes from [Telepathy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7t2kQAE0Ds) by Christina Aquilera, from the fabulous soundtrack of The Get Down.

Barry doesn’t notice at first. Or, if he does, he doesn’t think anything of it. It’s Iris, after all; they’ve been reading each other’s minds since they were kids.

So when he comes home on Friday night to find that she’s ordered the exact type of takeout he’d been craving — beef vindaloo with samosas from Aroma’s — he just chalks it up to them being on the same page, as usual. And the next day, when he feels an ache in the pit of his stomach that won’t go away no matter what, he just assumes that the Indian food wasn’t as good of an idea as he thought it was last night. The day after that, though, he wakes up to the sound of Iris’s voice, and that’s when things get weird.

“Dammit. I need a pad,” Barry hears her say. “And some Tylenol.”

He looks over; she’s shifting uncomfortably on the mattress, her eyes closed. “Okay,” says Barry, still half-asleep. “I’ll be right back.”

He zips to the bathroom, returning a second later with the Tylenol bottle and a purple pad from the basket under the sink. He hopes it’s okay; he wasn’t sure which type she wanted — in fact, to the best of his knowledge, she prefers tampons.

“I do,” says Iris. Her voice is different somehow, louder than it was a minute ago. Then — _How did he know what to grab?_ he hears, at the same time her mouth says, “Thanks, babe.”

“Uh,” says Barry. _I think something strange is going on._

“Why?” Iris asks, but then her eyes go wide. “You didn’t say that,” she says. “You— how did I hear that when you didn’t say that?”

“I don’t know,” Barry says, completely confused. His stomach rumbles suddenly, and Iris puts a hand on her belly.

“Holy crap, I’m starving,” she exclaims. “I’m never this hungry when I wake up.”

Barry’s eyes flit down to the pad in her hand, the Tylenol between them on the bed, and thinks about the pain he was feeling yesterday. “I don’t think it’s you,” he says slowly.

Iris’s words get jumbled up again with the sound of her thoughts — _Who else would it be?_ “What makes you say that?” _What the hell is going on?_

“I don’t know,” Barry says again, choosing to answer that last part. “But I think we’d better get—”

“To S.T.A.R. Labs,” Iris finishes. “And yes, we should get breakfast at McDonalds on the way.”

“I didn’t—” Barry begins, but then he just shakes his head and gets up. He throws some clothes on, giving yesterday’s shirt the sniff test while Iris ducks into the bathroom. Her pain really is bad, Barry thinks, as he feels the pull of it in his lower abdomen; he has to stop and double over briefly. That can’t be normal, can it?

“Thank you!” Iris calls through the door. “That’s what I’ve been saying for years.”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t believe you,” Barry replies. “I just didn’t know.”

 _It’s okay, babe,_ says Iris’s voice in his head. He jumps at the volume, the clarity of it; obviously their telepathy isn’t affected by distance. He wonders if Iris focused hard on getting that message through.

“Not really,” she answers, opening the door. She’s dressed in casual clothes, but of course she still looks stunning. _Thank you,_ she tells him again, with a smile. “But no, I wasn’t concentrating all that hard. Maybe you’re just more sensitive to it because of your powers?”

 _Maybe,_ Barry agrees silently, but it doesn’t feel right. None of this does. “Ready?” he asks out loud.

“When you are,” Iris says. She hops up in his arms, and they speed out of the loft in search of answers.

* * *

Twenty minutes, and an obscene number of Egg McMuffins later, they arrive at S.T.A.R. Labs to find Caitlin and Cisco arguing about enhancements to the suit’s telemetry. Barry glances at the screen as he approaches, sizing up both of their opinions on what would be best, and quickly sides with Cisco.

 _Quelle surprise,_ Iris says in his head.

Barry sends her a surprised glance. _I didn’t know you spoke French._

 _J’ai assisté à toutes les classes dans la neuvième année,_ Iris counters. _Pas comme toi._

“Show off,” Barry mutters, and, at the sound of his voice, Cisco turns around.

“Ah, Mr. and Mrs. West-Allen,” he says with a grandiose gesture. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company so early on a Sunday morning?”

 _It’s Sunday?_ thinks Barry, and Iris shakes her head with fond exasperation.

“Barry doesn’t know what day it is,” she explains.

“Okay,” Caitlin says slowly. “So, are you here by accident, or...?”

“No,” says Barry.

“Definitely not,” Iris says at the same time.

Cisco frowns. “What’s with you two?”

 _Is it that obvious?_ Barry thinks.

“Subtlety has never been your strong suit, Barr,” Iris answers him out loud.

Caitlin sends Cisco a startled look. Cisco shakes his head blankly.

“We’ve got a problem,” Barry explains. “Somehow, over the last few days, we’ve become telepathic.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then— “Oh my god!” Cisco exclaims, seizing Barry’s shoulders and pulling him in for a tight hug. “Congratulations!”

“What?” Barry stammers, as Cisco lets go of him and does the same to Iris.

“I mean, I didn’t think it would happen this soon,” Cisco goes on, “but it was just a matter of time, so—”

“Cisco,” Barry interrupts. “What are you talking about?”

 _Cisco thinks I’m pregnant,_ Iris explains in his head.

“You’re pregnant?” Barry shouts, but then Iris raises her eyebrows at him, and he remembers the pad and the Tylenol, and the pain that still hasn’t quite faded. “We’re not pregnant,” he tells Cisco.

“Trust me,” Iris emphasizes, even as her mind says, _We? Are_ you _carrying a baby for nine months?_

“Sorry,” says Barry. “Iris is not pregnant.”

 _Thank you,_ Iris thinks pointedly. “But no. It’s not like Cecile.”

“But we are telepathic,” says Barry. “It’s like she’s talking inside my head—”

“And I’m feeling what his body is feeling—”

“Right, and vice versa,” Barry concludes. “Like we’re sharing—”

“The same experiences,” they say together.

Cisco’s eyes are like dinner plates. Caitlin’s mouth is hanging open.

 _I think we broke them,_ Barry tells Iris silently.

 _They’ll be fine,_ Iris reassures him. _Maybe._

“Okay, that was the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Cisco says finally. “And bearing in the mind the creepy things that I see on a regular basis, that’s saying something.”

“Can you hear anyone else’s thoughts?” Caitlin asks.

“Yeah, like, what number am I thinking of?” Cisco adds.

“The number 23,” Barry and Iris say together, but only because they know him so well.

“That was too easy,” Cisco mutters. Barry chuckles.

“I can’t hear anyone else’s thoughts,” he answers Caitlin’s question. “Just Iris.”

 _So far,_ he thinks. “What, you think it’s spreading?” Iris asks him out loud.

“No, I— no,” Barry says, though he doesn’t need to be telepathic to see that Iris doesn’t believe him. _Maybe?_

 _Well, if it is, we’re in big trouble,_ Iris thinks, and Barry nods.

“We’ve gotta get to the bottom of it,” he says, before he realizes that their audience only heard half of that discussion. “Sorry,” he adds, and then he starts from the beginning, with the beef vindaloo and the pain.

“I wanted what he wanted,” Iris says, “but I didn’t know it until this morning.”

“And I thought I had food poisoning, but it turns out it was Iris’s cramps,” says Barry.

“Barry!” Iris exclaims, and Barry’s cheeks flush with the heat of her embarrassment. _They don’t need to know stuff like that._

 _Sorry,_ Barry thinks immediately. _Iris, I’m so sorry._

 _I know,_ Iris says, and it’s amazing that he can hear her mentally sigh.

Cisco is looking mildly uncomfortable about this revelation, but Caitlin hasn’t blinked. “How are your period symptoms?” she asks.

“How is that relevant?” Iris asks, but inside she’s saying, _What the fuck does that have to do with anything?_

“Language,” Barry says without thinking, and Iris sends him a glare.

“Thought police,” she mutters.

“Okay, you two are officially freaking me out,” Cisco declares, throwing up his hands. “I need to— science. I’m gonna go science. Over there.”

He crosses to the other side of the Cortex and starts fiddling with some tools, trying to look busy. Barry turns his attention to Caitlin again, discovers she’s got a calendar open on the computer screen.

“Do you know the date of your last menstrual cycle?” she asks Iris.

Barry feels himself pulled into Iris’s mind as she tracks back, tries to remember. _It was after the 19 th because I had that stressful meeting at work that day, and—_

Abruptly, Barry sees a flash of her memory: his own face from between her thighs— the warm and wet sensation of his tongue, swirling— the rush of orgasm— the echo of her moaning his name.

He coughs, half-stumbles, knocks some papers to the floor as he grabs at the counter for balance.

“Barry!” Caitlin says, reaching over to steady him. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he stutters, righting himself with his hands on the back of a chair— which fortunately allows him to hide his lower half. “I’m fine,” he reiterates, leaning on it with exaggerated casualness.

“I think it was the 21st,” Iris says smoothly. Probably no one else would notice, but Barry can see that her cheeks are slightly flushed.

 _Sorry, babe,_ she thinks in his direction, and Barry inhales deeply, lets himself feel her arousal as well as his own. He nods and tries to return his focus to the matter at hand.

“Okay, and the one before that?” Caitlin prompts. “On or around the 23rd?”

“I think so,” says Iris. “Why does this matter?”

“I think it’s the moon,” says Caitlin. “It’s been getting closer the last few months, and your period has become closely synched to its fullness.”

“I do usually get it on the full moon,” Iris agrees. “But I don’t usually get superpowers.”

“No,” says Caitlin. “But this month is a supermoon, meaning that the full moon has coincided with the closest part of the moon’s elliptical orbit. It’s the closest that the moon has been to Earth since the 1940s.”

“And the closest it’ll come again until 2034,” Barry finishes. He thinks he might see what Caitlin is getting at, but— “That still doesn’t explain the mind-reading.”

“Maybe not,” Caitlin says, “though I’ve been reading about a lot of weird occurrences in Central City over the last day or two. Nothing serious — electronic malfunctions, higher than usual numbers at emergency rooms, things like that.”

“The CCPD servers went down yesterday,” Barry remembers suddenly. He wasn’t there, what with his administrative leave and all, but Joe said it’d been a hell of a mess.

“And we lost power at CCPN,” says Iris. “Only for half an hour, but still.”

“Streetlights have been going out all over the city since last night,” Caitlin adds, showing them a map with various red dots on it. “St. Michael’s Hospital saw a 300% increase in ER visits due to minor traffic collisions, and Mt. Sinai lost a lot of patient data around midnight in what seems to be a power surge.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Barry asks.

 _There wasn’t anything you could do,_ Iris thinks, and Barry frowns when Caitlin says essentially the same thing a second later.

“I didn’t think we needed the Flash,” she says. “In fact I didn’t even think these things were connected until now.”

“Weird stuff always happens on the full moon,” Cisco chimes in, coming across the Cortex with a soldering iron that’s still faintly smoking.

 _What was he even doing over there?_ Iris wonders.

Barry shrugs. _Damned if I know._ “You’re right,” he says out loud. “The CCPD gets more 9-1-1 calls during the full moon, I don’t know why.”

“Dad always complained about that when he worked a beat,” Iris agrees.

Barry gets scattered impressions from her; the memories of Joe as a young cop are as faded for her as they are for him. Just a faint image of his policeman’s cap and evenings spent with a babysitter because he was working nights. Barry glances at Iris, and they share a little smile — they don’t need powers to know each other’s minds right now.

“Have you ever felt more intuitive when you’re on your period?” Caitlin asks, drawing Barry out of his thoughts.

“Maybe,” says Iris. She’s thinking back again, and Barry sinks into a chair, trying to give her some privacy.

“Any times where you’d be thinking of someone and then bump into them the next day, or you’d get a bad feeling, and then something bad would happen?”

“Sure,” Iris answers. “I get a lot of déjà vu, too.”

Caitlin nods seriously like this means something. “A lot of women believe in intuition and the power of the moon. There’s no science to it,” she adds quickly. “Just folklore.”

“Like the rumors that a supermoon causes earthquakes and tsunamis,” Cisco adds.

“The moon does affect the ocean, though, doesn’t it?” Iris asks.

“Yes, but a supermoon has only been shown to increase tides by a few inches,” Barry explains. “The moon itself has no effect on seismic activity; those disasters were just coincidence.”

 _This isn’t a coincidence,_ Iris tells Barry in his head. He nods.

“Caitlin, have we had a supermoon since the particle accelerator explosion?” he asks.

Caitlin clicks through her calendar again. “Not one this big,” she answers.

“And has Iris ever been scanned for dark matter?”

“Barry, you read my mind,” says Cisco.

“No,” Barry laughs, “I really didn’t.”

Cisco hefts a scanner and turns to Iris. “This should tell us if you’ve got some latent ability that only comes out during a full moon,” he explains, which is good because Barry can feel Iris’s trepidation at the piece of equipment that’s now in her face.

 _Like a werewolf?_ Iris thinks, and Barry takes her hand.

 _Nothing like that,_ he reassures her.

_I was kidding._

“Oh, well in that case,” says Barry with a smile.

“You’re still freaking me out,” Cisco reminds them under his breath.

“I think it’s sweet,” Caitlin counters. “You two always have had your own language, but now it’s just a bit more literal.”

 _Yeah, but how am I supposed to keep secrets?_ Iris wonders.

Barry frowns at her. _Secrets?_

“Nothing,” she says out loud. “Just— confidential sources, that kind of thing.”

And her brain immediately starts playing music, even though she doesn’t know all the words. _Ba de ya, dancing in September, ba de ya, something something something—_

Barry stares, but she doesn’t meet his eye, and she doesn’t stop the broadcast. With an effort, he tunes her out and looks to Caitlin and Cisco, who are both watching him expectantly.

“Nothing,” Cisco says. “No dark matter readings at all.”

“So it’s not me,” Iris concludes. _Ba de ya de ya-ah, ba de ya de ya-ah—_ “What about other women on their periods in Central City? Do you suppose they’re having the same thing?”

Caitlin shakes her head, shrugs. “If they are, I have no idea how we’d find that out.”

“You two aren’t synched up?” Cisco asks, waving a finger between Iris and Caitlin.

Caitlin rolls her eyes. “That’s folklore, too. Based on one extremely flawed study in the 1970s that proposed—”

“I’m kidding,” Cisco interrupts, raising his hands in surrender. “That study talked about women like they were animals, stemming from decades of misogyny, I know. I’ve listened to you over the years.”

“Oh,” says Caitlin, sounding surprised.

 _Caitlin rants a lot about the patriarchy and its effect on STEM research,_ Barry tells Iris telepathically.

 _As well she should,_ Iris replies through the fog of Earth, Wind, and Fire. “So, what do we do?” she asks out loud.

“If it is caused by the moon, I don’t know that there’s much we can do,” Caitlin replies. “The moon’s at its fullest tonight, so theoretically your symptoms should start to wane when it does.”

“So, by tomorrow I’ll be better?” asks Iris. _I can handle that._

“Theoretically,” Caitlin emphasizes. “We’re dealing with unknowns here; I’m just guessing.”

Barry nods. “Until then, I suppose we just wait.”

“Wait?” Cisco repeats incredulously. “Dude, you and your wife can read each other’s minds. This is straight out of a movie, we need to test this shit before it goes away!”

“I don’t know,” says Iris. The music is still in the background, but even without it her thoughts are too quick and scattered for Barry to get a bead on.

Before he can try again, an alarm starts sounding. Cisco puts down his equipment, and all four of them congregate around the map, a blinking red point signaling the trouble spot.

“Hostage situation at St. Anne’s Cathedral,” Cisco reports, zeroing in on the police scanner frequency. Barry hears snatches of calls for back-up, but he doesn’t wait for the whole story before he gets in uniform.

“They’re reporting multiple gunmen,” Caitlin adds. “Barry, be careful.”

“I will,” he assures her, and turns to Iris, whose fear is literally palpable to him. _I’ll be fine,_ he tells her as he kisses her. Telepathy sure is useful for this kind of thing.

 _It is,_ Iris agrees silently. _Make sure you come home._

“I promise,” he says out loud, and he takes one more second to taste her lips before he’s running.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Barry and Iris's French exchange isn't really relevant (the point is that she can speak it and he can't), but here's a translation in case you're interested:
> 
>  _Quelle surprise_  
>  = What a surprise 
> 
> _J’ai assisté à toutes les classes dans la neuvième année. Pas comme toi._  
>  = I went to [French] class in ninth grade, unlike you.


End file.
